Читать книгу Against Verres - Marcus Tullius Cicero - Страница 83

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For as for the choosing of other judges by Junius,^[23] of that I say nothing. For why should I? Should I venture to speak against the lists which you produced? It is difficult to do so; for not only does your own influence and that of the judges deter me, but also the golden ring of your secretary.^[24] I will not say that which it is difficult to prove; I will say this—which I will prove,—that many men of the first consequence heard you say that you ought to be pardoned for having produced a false list, for that, unless you had guarded against it, you yourself would also have been ruined by the same storm of unpopularity as that under which Caius Junius fell. ¹⁵⁸In this way has that fellow learnt to take care of himself and of his own safety, by entering both in his own private registers and in the public documents what had never happened; by effacing all mention of what had; and by continually taking away something, changing something (taking care that no erasure was visible), interpolating something. For he has come to such a pitch, that he cannot even find a defence for his crimes without committing other grimes. That most senseless man thought that such a substitution of his own judges also could be effected by the instrumentality of his comrade, Quintus Curtius, who was to be principal judge; and unless I had prevented that by the power of the people, and the outcries and reproaches of all men, the advantage of having judges taken from this decuria^[25] of our body, whose influence it was desirable for me should be rendered as extensive an possible, while he was substituting others for them without any reason, and placing on the bench those whom Verres had approved.

[The rest of this oration is lost.]